Emergency address systems are often installed within commercial, residential, or governmental buildings. Examples of these buildings include hospitals, warehouses, schools, shopping malls, multi dwelling units, government buildings, and casinos, to list a few examples. The emergency address systems are sometimes integrated with, or part of, larger building management systems such as fire alarm systems, security systems and access control systems, among other examples.
Emergency address systems typically include a control panel and notification devices. The control panel sends instructions to the notification devices to generate voice messages, which are played through speakers of the notification devices. In response to an alarm signal (for example, from a connected fire alarm system), the notification devices will play voice messages that include instructions for evacuating the building. For emergency address systems that include addressable speaker systems, individual voice messages may be sent to different notification devices by the control panel.
Typically, the emergency address systems are periodically tested by inspectors (e.g., monthly, quarterly, or annually depending on fire or building codes) to verify that the devices are physically sound, unaltered, working properly, not obstructed, properly labeled, and located in their assigned locations. In general, the term inspector refers to any person that inspects the alarm initiating device. Thus, the inspector could be a person that only inspects the devices or the inspector could be, for example, a technician that is also able to install, configure, and/or repair emergency address systems.
This testing of the devices is often accomplished with a walkthrough test. Typically, walkthrough tests are performed by a team of at least two inspectors. The first inspector manually sends instructions to notification devices from the control panel, and the second inspector walks through the building verifying that the correct voice messages are played by the correct notification devices. The second inspector verifies the voice messages by listening and confirming that the played voice messages match the intended voice messages and by confirming that no voice messages are played in areas where they are not intended.
More recently, it has been proposed to use connected services systems to monitor building management systems. This has allowed the control panels to report status information to the connected services systems and receive instructions from the connected services systems. These connected services systems will also often have remote diagnostic capabilities. As such, connected services systems enable communications between a control panel of an emergency address system and a mobile computing device operated by an on-site inspector and thus can be used to facilitate the inspection process.